Teach, Music, Travel

After completing Week 3 now, I can see how far I have come in terms of understanding and learning about 2.0 interaction in the learning environment. I am excited to see what else I will uncover as we go along, especially since I can't preview the upcoming module it keeps the suspense going! As I am growing and learning throughout this course, I am trying to keep in mind ways to incorporate tools not only in the classroom setting (as I have seven years of teaching experience) but also in training environments. My goal is to work as an instructional designer either for an educational company or in a corporate environment. I have decided to leave myself open to various opportunities as I know finding the right fit in terms of work takes the right team/opportunity.  I have explored various ways to incorporate 2.0 learning into the school environment in this blog and on social media posts and will continue to do so. However, it is the corporate setting that I need to do further thinking...

 I have been very interested in how virtual environments can use in a classroom setting. Second Life is one tool that has been around for some time, where teachers allow students to explore virtual environments and interact with one another within the educational setting. Here is a video explaining how it has been used: Something else interesting, and more modern, that I have come across is creating a Bitmoji classroom.  You can create the look of a virtual class with a teacher avatar, create a "class photo" by asking students to create their avatar and uploading it into an image, or have students incorporate their avatar into their own assignments. It is a fun and modern touch that increase engagement. I can see this being used at the beginning of the year as an onboarding tool and carried throughout for online teaching assignments.

I have been pursuing a certification in Google+ Fundamentals Training and learning how to incorporate this tool into the classroom. For those who are interested, you can check out the classes and certifications they offer here: https://edu.google.com/teacher-center/training/?modal_active=none.  While much of the information I already know, there have been various scenarios and tips presented that have introduced new ideas and concepts of how to implement these tools into the classroom. Something I have mentioned before in one of my Instagram posts is the use of Google Forms as an assessment tool.  Google Docs is also a great way to share a document and allow open dialogue between students via the use of comments. Students can also share documents via Drive and create folders to share.  There are so many ways to use Google for Education to create a collaborative learning environment! I am looking forward to picking up more tips along my way. Anyone have any ideas to s...

Today I went on an adventure to figure out how to use basic animations for Twitter and Instagram posts. My thought is when creating content to share with students, animations are another great way to grab a student's attention and generate a response. Using Canva, I was able to create an "Instagram post", and search under "Elements" to add animations. I searched under "elements" for "blob moving" and was able to find moving bubbles to highlight text. I also searched for "moving music notes" and found animations under that category.  I believe that there are a lot of uses that Instagram and Twitter can be incorporated into the music classroom, and I am excited to share my ideas in future posts. 

 Form (Middle School, Women's Choir): Students will learn a musical round, such as Frere Jacque (Brother John), link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZPqYuKwiag. Students will first learn the melody individually through call and response style, as well as the translation from French. The instructor will be recorded and encourage students to sing back the song broken down into smaller phrases. The program will then show a monk, Brother John, sleeping, the name of the game is to wake him up  with three alarm clocks as he loves to sleep (Relates to the text of the song).  The program will then have students record their line individually with metronome clicking to keep time, and it will turn into a graphic of an alarm clock once finished. Words will also be highlighted in time as they sing to support timing. To create the form of a three-part round to wake up Brother John, alarm clocks will be placed on the bed at the correct time (each after the first two phrases "Are...

This week, I am exploring different ideas regarding the possibilities of different lessons that could be created that interweave technology in the music classroom using social media and game-based learning. They are categorized by the key concepts (From the IB curriculum) that they cover.  This first post is an idea for an elementary school music program: Creativity (Fifth Grade, General Music): An interactive map where students can travel around the world, listen, interact and learn about different cultures and their music specifically. Interactive games would be part of each country and focus on various aspects of music learning. For example, one game for Africa may be about rhythm and drumming. Prior knowledge includes knowledge of eighth notes quarter notes, and quarter rests. A student will click on the drum in the correct time to quarter and eighth notes that are scrolling in time on the bottom of the screen. The rhythm is backed up by an instrumental track of an African folk...

In this week's reading, Prensky, M. (2001), raised so many exciting points for me, many that I have thought about myself during my seven years working in education. Whilst teaching, I noticed that many of the veteran teachers had problems relating to and connecting with the current generation, as they were asking for the attention of Digital Natives, who are used to stimulation and information streaming in from televisions and computers at a very fast rate. Supporting educational materials have not been extensively developed yet to help teachers adapt and keep up with the mindset of this generation, making it a challenge for veteran and even newer teachers to keep up. During my last few years teaching music, I made a conscious effort to try to combine technology into the classroom, whether it was Google Classroom and presentations, supporting YouTube clips, or interactive games like Kahoot. I saw and continue to see a need to approach classroom learning from a different perspective...

 In this week's reading, I enjoyed learning about how Keitzmann et al. (2011) defined the functionality of various social media tools, especially in regards to his honeycomb visual  (p. 243). I also liked how he described each site as having its own emphasis on one particular comb. This helps with determining which social media tool may be best in each training/educational setting. What I am doing as I read, is trying to relate things to my overall theme this semester to my projects that will relate to teaching IB music, and how to incorporate various technologies into this setting. I will be thinking about this chart as I move forward and actually develop the tools for my projects. Kietzman, J.H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I.P., & Silvestre, B.S. (2011).  Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. ScienceDirect, 54 , 241-251.

I have begun exploring my approach to this course, and have decided that I will focus on my work teaching IB music. For a long time, I have pondered the idea of how to incorporate Web 2.0 learning tools into units. My experience is with teaching elementary and middle school levels. As their approach to IB units slightly differs, I will focus primarily on elementary music as that is where more of my experience lies. I believe the tools we will be exploring in this class can be used to improve IB units by encouraging further learning and participation within the classroom setting (during synchronous learning) as well as be implemented outside the classroom without teacher guidance (during asynchronous learning). I would like to primarily explore how these tools can be used asynchronously outside the actual classroom setting, as covid has taught us that cracking the asynchronous learning code is crucial to the future of education. We must be able to adapt as we have entered a new era. I h...